Here's a totally non-related to the story photo. What a nice baby.

¶ 4:57 PM //

¶ 4:51 PM //

How do you fit 10 people in a van that seats six? This is a happy problems of leading Key of Hope. It feels good when we have so many who want to work with kids, you need to develop creative seating. Sometimes you go home from the orphanage frustrated because the kids weren’t listening or things went sour. But there are weeks like this, where everyone’s excited about going and still happy coming home.

We’re in the Health and Hygiene unit of our life skills curriculum. The central message was the importance of washing your hands. I know it sound simplistic but it’s really necessary.

I’m finding that my role is more and more equipping and empowering team mates than being the front man. It’s okay, I still get to be there with a kid plopped on my lap or on my back or sometimes tied to my leg. (Three-legged race). I’m finding that I really like helping people find their niche, letting them experiment, make mistakes and guiding with a few suggestions.

Leadership is a lot like Christmas time. You have all these people with all these gifts, and your job is to open them up to see what’s inside. Some people are bold and almost want to take over, others need to be coaxed and encouraged. Some have developed skills for years and some have gifts inside that they don’t even know about.

Our newest team member is also our team translator. Katya is from Moldova. Before she went through her Discipleship Training School, she had never worked with kids before. She was an “only child,” and became a Christian as a teenager. But during her DTS outreach, she was thrown into work at an orphanage. In her mid-twenties, she discovered for the very first time that she not only CAN she work with kids, but she likes it and is good at it. This week she learned two new games never seen before. “Capture the Flag” and “Ultimate Frisbee.”

Katya started out for us as a translator. Most people in Key of Hope are only learning Russian and Ukrainian (or English). It was a regular pain calling around for somebody to translate for us. So right off the bat, Katya was a major gift from God for the team. Now, she’s volunteered to lead the next lesson.

Pray for me. I really love my team and want to encourage growth and discipleship. The normal and easy thing is for me to do as much by myself as possible and let others support me in the background. But why leaves workers frustrated and stifled with unreached potential? My continuing prayer is to help my team to keep growing, to be spiritually healthy and equipped to be the strongest team possible. Not just while in YWAM but in their churches and nations when their time with us is complete.

¶ 4:46 PM //

A liger is pretty much my favorite animal. But this is my favorite nephew doin' a little dance. Really he's my favorite reason for coming home.

¶ 1:27 PM //

Another favorite Moldova photo features my firewood chopping partner Tanya, making idle threats.

¶ 1:19 PM //

Hi Friends and Family,

Nothing “update worthy” has happened since I’ve arrived in Ukraine a few days ago, but I want to share about some unique experiences I had in Michigan.

As I prepared to go home, the students at Hollywood Elementary School (in Stevensville) gathered A LOT of stuff for the orphans here in Ukraine. In fact, 280 pounds of blankets, hats and gloves, underwear, toys, deodorant, and other things. We filled four boxes, each to the 70 pound limit. It’s coming by boat through http://www.meest.net/. (For those who later ask for the cheapest way to ship to Ukraine)

The school allowed me to speak to nearly all the students at Hollywood in a series of mini-assemblies. It’s an interesting challenge to talk to kids in public school about your job as a missionary because you can’t speak freely about God.

I wouldn’t violate the law or school rules and I want to honor those who allowed me to speak, and those who collected clothing for “my” kids. But I also wanted to say something valuable to the kids, something they could “take away” after the project was complete. So I took out the “God vocab” and said things like this…

“…I really love my job. I feel like my purpose on the earth is to reach out and help orphans, and bring them hope…”

“…Every kid is special and important, whether they have a family or not, regardless of skin or hair color, or if they have physical or mental difficulties…”

“…If you’re really smart, or good at sports, or popular, or have more than other kids, those are gifts. You don’t have those gifts just for yourself, or so that you can brag about your math score being higher than another kid’s. You have those gifts to help others. If you’re the toughest, strongest kid in your class, it’s not so that you can push smaller kids around. But you should use that gift to protect the weaker ones…”

On driving home, I thought about those words. These values are shared by many people, Christian or not. Nobody will call the school board in opposition to anything I said. But there are some God fingerprints on those concepts.

If the universe and all forms of life are here by blind chance than nobody really has a purpose. Valuing human life is false, contrived, even delusional. Everything and everyone is just here by natural selection - which means genetically and locationally “lucky.” (locationally is not a real word)

But all kids are important and special. This value is not always embraced here in Ukraine. In the atheistic Soviet Union, children with disabilities were looked upon as defective and inferior. Residue of that worldview is still in Ukraine, and we fight that mentality continually. Special needs kids are not given the care and time they could have, and it’s not just about finances. It’s a case of which lives are considered valuable

And the idea of strong children protecting the weak violates that principle of the “survival of the fittest.” Getting rid of the weak and the poor and the mentally ill will mean a better gene pool for future generations. This is ideology in the writings of many social Darwinists.

And that’s what makes our God so great. How many times does the Bible express God’s love for widows and orphans? Most people working here in Ukraine have a share of that love in their heart. Our belief, our love for God, shapes the decisions we make and the things we do.

¶ 5:05 PM //